Eagledad

Your heart was in the right place and that is what is most important. I've done enough of these things to understand the haunting quiet of reflecting back on those heat of the moment decisions. There are a lot of could ofs, would ofs, and should ofs in response to the situation, but you will eventually just have to chock it down as a lesson learned for the next time. Its really that simple, we will do better next time. After a couple of years of wishing I could have a mulligans when dealing with scouts, I started to unerstand that I am only human and the best I can do is just try and not repeat the same mistakes. What ever happens at your Pinewood derby next year Pack15nissan, I'm sure it will be better than this year. One little suggestion from my experiences; don't add more rules, just do it better. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

Wow, these are some great memories. The temperature of the first day of my first campout was a humid 80 degrees. An Ice storm came that night followed by 6 inches of snow. We were so unprepared for it that we broke camp at day break. I will never forget the SPL getting everyone up and telling us not to eat the yellow snow. The adults in our troop were big on wilderness survival and wanted us to learn how kill, clean and cook game. So I experienced cleaning and cooking a 400 lb hog, turkeys, and chickens. While many here may find killing and cleaning animals hard, we found cooking to be the challenge. Our troop took second place at Camporee every year. We could never beat troop 84. That was back when Camporees were serious business. Great subject. Barry

>>No dispensing with buddies to go to the bathroom no way no how. This is not a lost issue it is a youth protection issue you can read that leader protection issue if you want.

>>How do other troops use their ASPLs? Do you use multiple ones? Do they run program and supervise positions/have duties explicitly for them? I think if we put our ASPLs to work, we could better prepare them for being SPL next elections and hone their skills.

Our troop was dropped off about mile from camp to hike the rest of the way. During the hike, the troop hiked apon a simulated single car wreck the older scouts had set up. The spent a couple weeks learning how to make simulated wounds and had a lot of fun setting it all up. Barry

You take the knife away from the scout? Would you take the knife away from one of your ASMs? It just me, but I believe boys are't going to start acting like adults until we treat them like adults. Barry

>>I think it is a silly custom. Teach the boys how to safely use a tool. When they use it improperly I correct them. If they abuse it then I admonish them and remove the weapon. I've never asked for a card.

>>Are you claiming that the true source of morality is the Christian faith? If so then you are denigrating all the other faith traditions.

>>Don't really care what the Bible says, since it's not my religious book. "Because the Bible says so" is not a persuasive argument to me.

This is a great discussion and everyones contribution is thought provoking. I teach leadership more under Johns definition of a leader inspires and influences people to accomplish team (organizational) goals. Im not sure that creators of vision are always great leaders. But I do believe great leaders have to believe in the vision to do their job well. I also agree with Stosh that the best leaders are true servants of the team. I do not believe that the leader must have the same skills of the rest of the group, but instead needs the skills for inspiring and influeincing. I also like the definition that a good manager is one who develops a mission or plan based on a leaders vision. A manager may or may not be a good leader, but a good leader knows their limitations and is humble enough to build a team to compensate for those limitations. Some folks dont understand the importance of the vision, but there is a book out (cant remember the name just now) that is basically a conclusion of a study of successful companies. It summed up that the most successful Fortune 500 companies are the ones who only hire employees that believe in the company vision or mission. Great discussion folks. Barry

Ah the memories. Those are good times looking back. Hey, at least he is open to advise. My daughter is so much smarter than me that she would be telling me how I don't have a clue. However, I've seen her in action, she will make a square peg fit in a round hole if it kills her. Heaven help those 20 guys that worked at the same time because they WOULD get the job done. I pray for her husband (whoever it will be) everyday. Barry

>>What happened with Canadian scouting and CampFire was not about religion but more about a lack of vision and incompetent management internally.

I'm a little surprised by the negative comments. Maybe its because I have been involved with a similar situations while on the district commitee, but I dont see any evil intent here or some nut wanting to stir the pot. The correct answer is simple, contact the CC and work together with the COR. If there is some disingenuousness motivation here, it will likely get filtered during that process. Council doesnt just casually watch these things happen. Barry

>>You got to be kidding, outside of the LDS church no religious group provides large financial support to the BSA.

Personally I like Spring Webelos Woods better because it gives the Webelos I leaders a chance to see the troops they want to visit next fall. I found that most Webelos IIs dens have already set up their agenda by the time the get to a Fall Webelos Woods. Also, we try to do a little bit of training for the Webelos leaders, which include the Bear leaders, so I think at least the Bear leaders should come. One other thing I think is important is I found when I was on district that Webelos leaders struggle to visit troops because they either don't know who to visit or feel to intimidated. So invite all the Webelos Leaders and troop leaders together to a meet and greet. I called it a tea, but have coffee, cookies, cokes or what ever, but get them mingling together to break the ice and learn names and pass out numbers. Barry

You guys quibble over words that are thousands of years old. They didn't loose there intended meaning then, and they don't now. Our culture may degrade into morale depravity at this time in history, but the bible will remain the same to those who read and follow it to the end of time. Most Christians who really struggle with the text either don't study the bible or are motivated politically. Also the bible supports what it does say about the lifestyle with what it doesn't say. Like; two mommy families or two daddy families. Barry

>>How is that done in your troop or is there no effort on the part of the adults to do so because things are going smoothly with the adults running the show?

I guess I dont understand the question. It appears that we are given the choice of the two extremes when just about all troops work somewhere in the middle. Surely even that adults gets some time to learn from the experience as well. I enjoyed your post Mafaking. There was a time that I sure could sure relate to it. Barry

>>Just to be clear: I don't CARE what the bible says about homosexuality any more than I care what it says about shellfish. It is completely and totally irrelevant and any attempt to argue from it as an authority is vacuous.

Interesting discussion: As I grew with our program, my vision of developing character was always the same, but my methods of Scoutmastering changed. While I trusted at the beginning with the concept that scouting is a game with a purpose, my experience confirmed that scouting REALLY IS a game with a purpose. The game is the easy part because boys by nature will strive for adventure where ever they are. The purpose is the hard part. Maybe Im more anal about developing character than most, but my nature is also measuring performance and making changes to improve. I will say I failed a lot, so I have a lot of experience in how not to as well as how to reach the goals of building character in a camping club type youth program. As I was learning from my humbling failures, I developed ideals that helped me steer the program toward a game with a purpose. Ideals like: -The troop is an arena where scouts practice the Scout Law and Oath. -A troop is the real world scaled down to a boys size. -Boys learn almost everything by watching and doing and almost nothing by listening. -If a boy has to sit and listen, than likely the troop program is doing it wrong. Needing a JLT class became a red flag that we needed to change something. -If what a boy does in the troop doesnt contribute toward practicing some value of character, it doesnt belong in the program. From wearing a uniform to tying a square knot, the scout should be practicing a character value. -To learn something, a person must practice that something. Character is a culmination of knowledge and experience. Each balances the other. -Never say no to a scout. Let the scout pursue it to the end so he can learn why. A troop has to be action oriented as apposed to lecture oriented to develop character. I personally believe that leadership development is one of the best ways for a boy to practice character skills because the intensity of controlling the group is fastest method for him to learn his weaknesses. However, I learned that most leadership skills are learned by age 14 by observing the older scout role models in action. As I said, I was anal about developing character, but I also learned that the more simple the program, the better is was in becoming a Game with a Purpose. To me the developers of the scouting program basically had it right and that we seem to make it harder on ourselves as we added rules, policies, regulations and classes. I am somewhat comfortable that if the adults strive to have an outdoor program and follow the basic plan laid out for them by the BSA, they will have a pretty good character development program as well. Even some of the Eagle Mills have good qualities in their program, they just dont have the impact of a boy run program. Good discussion. Barry

>>Eagledad said that they tried the letter writing method. I think that would be good for one group of older scouts, but for my tigers that would not work. They may be too young and it would possibly take too long to complette the task.

>>Would 4H use push-ups? Debate club? Science club? Student forum? Do public schools? No!

Beav, your troop sounds so much the troop you visited when I was SM. May I suggest you throw in the idea that your scouts learn how to camp light. We went this way to get rid of one of our trailers. Everyone just needs to start using back packing gear. It sounds like something the scouts would hate, but in reality the scouts loved it and the adults hated it. In fact, the adults still brought a lot of gear. As for new parents, I wanted them to come to the first campout because it use that whole weekend to show them a boy run program. No mistery, this is what your son will do every campout. And, this is the campout were every new scout and adult took their totin Chit training from the scouts. The only adults who attended where the adults in training. If that doesn't impress boy run to the parents, nothing will. Barry

>>If you make a scout sit-out an activity as a form of punishemnt, are you not embarrassing them? You are denying them the opportunity to participate.

>>And don't talk about Obama and the Democrats. This was all done under the Bush Corporate Welfare Program. As Beavah noted. Obama's just stuck cleaning up the mess.